PHOTO SPECIAL.......... THE ESSENTIAL PHOTO TOOLKIT

THE ESSENTIAL PHOTO TOOLKIT





If you love taking photographs and shooting home videos then you should check out these free tools that will not only add pizazz to your snapshots, but also help you manage and share those fun moments. Ashutosh Desai and Savio D'Souza tell you about...

COLLABORATE AND SHOOT

Sharypic | http:www.sharypic.com This web service lets you collect all the pho tographs clicked by friends and relatives from a picnic, party or wedding you attended.After registering with Sharypic, create an event ­ say, `Beach Picnic 2016' ­ where up to ten contributors can send in their pictures.

During set-up, you will need to assign a unique e-mail ID (like FabBeachPicnic2016@ sharypic.com) to which your contributors can send their snapshots. You can also configure Sharypic to scour Twitter, Vine and Instagram for photographs taken by friends. For this, you need to assign a special hashtag, like #FabBeachPicnic2016, and Sharypic will auto load images from these social networks into your event album. With the free plan, you can create a six-hour-long event, which means your hashtag is effective for just that duration.At the end of it all, you will have a tidy collection of images that you can sort, edit and share with everyone. Now, to touch up your pictures before you share them with friends and relatives, try the “Free Edition“ of Serif PhotoPlus. It boasts of advanced image-editing tools that let you work with “layers“, photo filters and built-in effects.

You can adjust the brightness and contrast in your photos, tweak hue and saturation, straighten and crop pictures, remove red eye and blemishes, and so much more.

What makes PhotoPlus a superb picture editor for beginners is its How-To documentation that appears on the left side of its interface. You can refer to this step-by-step guide to familiarize yourself with the software and learn basic tricks in photo manipulation.You can also try the guide's “Do this for me“ option to allow the software to carry out the steps automatically .

Note: To download PhotoPlus, you will need to register on the website with a valid e-mail address. Serif will then send you an authentication e-mail along with a product key that will be required to install the free software.

SHARE WITH FRIENDS

Dropshots | http:www.dropshots.com Dropshots is a one-stop solution that lets you share your photos and videos with whoever you want. After you transfer your pictures to the website, you can sort them by upload date, or by the day they were shot.

You can also create password-protected albums for added security . Dropshots even lets you share your pictures on popular social networks, including Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and Google+.

For greater control over your account, you can go into its settings menu to hide your images from search engines, password-protect your entire collection, and even prevent visitors from downloading your content.

Click on a photo in your album, and it opens up full size. Friends who have been given access can view them like a slideshow, comment on pictures and download them, while album owners can add keywords for each picture (to make it easier to search), and even edit them.

Dropshots includes an easy-to-use online SavlenaiStockGetty Images editor that lets you add filters, crop, rotate and resize your pictures. These modified images can then be saved as copies onto the service.

Besides using its web interface, you can also upload pictures to Dropshots via its app for iOS, and software for your PC or Mac.

POST TO YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKS

Expojure | http:www.expojure.com Now that you've shared images with certain friends individually, you might want to consider Expojure to publish a few pictures simultaneously to your accounts on Facebook, Google+, Flickr, 500px and SmugMug.

After registering with the service, open the “Dashboard“ to connect it with the accounts where you want to post your pictures. Next, click on “Organizer“ to upload your photographs to Expojure. By default, pictures are saved in “collections“ (folders) chronologically. You can name the collection, enter a brief description, and select the accounts where you want them published. Selecting pictures one-by-one lets you add tags, choose a category (such as animals, family, sports, etc), and view detailed information (EXIF data) about them.

The dashboard also lets you browse your accounts to quickly see which pictures have been published, are yet to be uploaded or have failed to go online.

BACKUP YOUR PHONE

Trunx | http:www.trunx.me Trunx | http:www.trunx.me runx helps you take regular backups of all the snapshots on your smartphone as well as those published on your Facebook, Instagram and Dropbox accounts. Create a free account and you get 15GB of free space.Get up to ten friends to join Trunx and you will earn 2GB more for each invite. You can set Trunx to automatically back up pictures and five-minute videos from your phone's gallery. Images appear in a timeline and can be tagged to make browsing easier.

You can also save photos with a voice tag using a feature called EchoPix. Trunx lets you create custom albums that can be shared with friends and family (who will also need to have an account). Also, its PIN code feature keeps `private' photos secure from prying eyes. Don't worry, your moments will always be stored in the same hi-res quality at which your camera shot them. This tool is available for the Mac, PC, Android, iOS and Kindle Fire devices.

MANAGE YOUR STORAGE

MultCloud | http:www.multcloud.com Mover | http:www.mover.io S o your pictures are shared and stored, but, after a while ­ as your photo collection grows managing them across multiple cloud storage accounts can be quite a hassle. Here, you could try either MultCloud or Mover for their ability to connect to over 20 cloud storage services, including Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box and Copy.

Both, MultCloud and Mover, allow you to move files and folders seamlessly across these accounts. You can copy-paste files, browse, and run a filtered search too. Simply select the source and destination folder and let the service do the heavy lifting. You can also schedule data transfers on a regular basis, so your backup can run automatically in the cloud even when your PC is switched off.

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